Monday, December 10, 2012

An Eye-Opening Experience, An American Thanksgiving in Africa and a Goodbye to a New Friend

I’ve
said it a million times already, but I’ll say it again: Life on the road means
being in a state of constant change.As
I write this, Stefan and I have split ways after two months traveling together
(I will be stopping by in Germany on the way home for a visit), I am just over
a week into my single speed bike ride through Zambia (a country that even has hills!), am staying with a Peace Corps group
who is putting on a girls camp and shortly will continue my ride north to Lake
Tanganyika (the longest lake in the world) to buy a boat.I think I alluded to this earlier, but my
plan is to barter my bicycle for a traditional wooden canoe of some sort when I
get to the lake, then solo it all the way from Zambia through Tanzania to
Burundi… and it’s the rainy season.

Like
my single speed bike ride across Botswana, it’s just an
idea I had and couldn't get out of my head, I saw a satellite photo of the lake
and I was hooked. Once again I don’t
really know what I’m going to be getting myself into and during my (admittedly
brief) research I certainly didn’t find anyone else who has done the lake
either solo or in a wooden boat. I have
found people paddling the lake in groups using modern sea kayaks, but what fun
would that be? Anyways, that’s still a
few weeks away so both you and I will just have to wait. Until then, here’s another little glimpse of
my life in Africa.

Wow,
this was more than a month ago, time sure flies. Monday was spent in the usual way; fixing a
few little things, running errands around town and eating a traditional Zambian
dinner together with the orphanage head.
In the evening, Lisa, Stefan and I played pickup-sticks, which brought
me back to playing with my friends Nick, Ellen and Brendan back in Seattle and
admittedly made me homesick, for a few minutes at least. The day after was spent in much the same way,
but with less productivity. Stefan and I watched some mediocre movie, then in
the afternoon headed off to the market where he bought a small axe for under
$3. They are very neat little tools,
about as simple and primitive as it gets but they are easy to make and cheap to
buy, making them the perfect African tool.
That night was German pancakes again, always a popular dinner.

Lunch
at the orphanage (and the re-election of Obama, I made sure to visit the
internet café that day to read all about the results).

After
dinner most of us headed off to the Choma Sports Club, where a few of us played
racket ball. I wanted to join in, but
I’d cut the bottom of my toes the other day and was unfortunately unable. Either way, it is a cool place to be and a
fun little activity to have in town.

Thursday
was a very bad day. I’m still not sure
how to write about it and explain it, partly because I don’t know all the
facts, partly because it is a very sensitive issue, but I will do the best I
can… The government had threatened to
take over the orphanage numerous times before and never followed through with
their words. This time they actually
meant it.

A
letter was left on the door saying people from the government would be coming
the next day to take control of the orphanage from Ms Fischer had been running
and funding through German donors for the past eight or so years. We all knew what this meant: that in short
order the place will be run into the ground, the kids would become homeless and
because 80% of them have HIV/AIDS and some are physically and/or mentally
handicapped, they will likely no longer have access to necessary care and medication,
meaning some of them will simply die.
I’m getting upset just writing about it.

The
short version of it is that the employees were demanding more pay. This is where things get sensitive, but the
truth is basically Zambians tend to believe white people are all swimming on
cash and they can and should pay the workers far more than they do. The orphanage is (Was? Maybe it has collapsed
already) a foreign funded non-profit, and because they were not bringing in
huge sums of money, were paying a bit below what are apparently very onerous
wage requirements set by the government (I have a feeling many businesses don’t
conform to these rules, but this organization was targeted because it was run
by foreigners). Because of this the
employees, who were from what I understand still making more than enough to get
by comfortably, were operating under a short-term contract that had lower wage
requirements and was renewed every few weeks.
The employees decided they wanted to be paid more, and when Children’s
Nest said it wasn’t possible, they went to the government, resulting in the takeover.

Because
all of the funding was coming from the German donors and volunteers, that will
now dry up without the primary organizer and fundraiser. No one wants to donate money to an organization that is almost guaranteed be corrupt and incompetent, not to mention the volunteers will stop coming without the German connection. Where is the pay for the workers going to
come from now? Certainly not the
government, they don’t have the funds to run these kinds of organizations, not
to mention the corruption that takes place and tends to sink those that do
manage to get funding. I know it sounds
cynical, but that’s how things go out here.
I’ve heard these kinds of stories in every African country I’ve visited
thus far and while I didn’t want to believe it was as bad as I’d heard, it is
and then some. It seems the only thing that happens quickly in Africa is collapse. Apparently the guy the
government brought in to take over the orphanage has had two other
organizations collapse under him previously.
So as a result of this takeover instigated by the employees, not only
are they starting off the inevitable decay of the organization and putting the
kids onto the street, killing some in the process, they are putting themselves
out of a job!

As
soon as this all went down, the aunties (the local Zambians), started acting
up. They told the children they didn’t
have to talk to the volunteers anymore, they were ignoring the volunteers or
outright disrespecting them, at one point they pushed through Ms Fischer’s
door to her house demanding more money (even after she was no longer the head)
and refusing to let her say goodbye to the children because she might use
witchcraft on them. By Monday the kids
were already going without meals. I am
going to leave it at that. There is a
lot more I could say about this topic, such as the anti-white/foreigner animosity that always seems to be below the surface, but I’m going to stop myself right here
and now. The next few days the girls
tried to go on as normal, but continuing as it has been was now
impossible.

Despite
all this, we still went around and did things with the kids, but there was a
massive amount of tension all the time. Each
day we saw the kids we thought it may be the last, and we were essentially
going around saying goodbyes.

Enough
of that. Let’s have some fun. We all desperately needed to unwind after an
extremely stressful time for all of us, so we headed out to Gavin’s parents
place for a few beers a lovely swim in the hot springs and dinner.

The
next morning we were back at Gavin’s, with the intention of doing a little game
drive around his family’s property. We
all loaded up, African style in the back of the pickup truck and set off,
airguns in hand for some target practice along the way.

Our
first stop was to the dam for a swim but only Andrew and I actually went in,
the others just watched and laughed at us getting tangled up in the water
lilies (which I then put in my hair). We
managed to see a few zebra, some antelope and plenty of birds. As we were driving slowly down one of the
dirt roads, Andrew stopped and said there was an orchid in the top of one of
the trees and that he wanted it for his mom.
How he managed to see the thing, I’m not sure, but naturally the job of
retrieving it was mine. In swim shorts
and flip flops, I climbed up the tree, about 25 feet or so, and was able to
reach the branch the orchid was on.
Luckily it was quite a rotten limb and I was able to break the whole
thing off with one hand and toss the limb with attached flower to my audience
below.

The
sun setting behind the gum trees as we drove through the tobacco fields. The girls all returned to town, but Stefan
and I stayed behind with Matt, Steve, Andrew, Gavin and Johnner for a bit of a
guy’s night.

In
the morning, we returned to town, spent some time in the market and had many
more discussions about the uncertain times ahead. The stress and uncertainty was wearing on us
all and everyone was trying figure out their next moves. Because Stefan and I had only gotten 30-day
visas for Zambia, the next day we had to visit the immigration office for a
(free) 30-day extension. I was worried
it would take ages, but 10 minutes in a cramped office filled with strange
Zambian government posters and a few notes in a beat up book was all it took to
get our extension stamp. A pleasant
surprise.

On
our way back to the house, we stopped by the post office to pick up packages
the girls families had sent from Germany.
A great deal of it was food from home and gifts for the children,
including a large number of Santa hats and I think it did a great deal to raise
their spirits, especially the jars of Nutella.

At
this point there was a serious discussion as to whether it was even safe for
the girls to stay in the house anymore.
There was a discussion of getting packed and everyone leaving the next
morning. We didn’t end up going with
that option, but none of us felt very comfortable leaving our valuables behind
even for a few hours with no one around, so when we went out to Sonny’s for
dinner, we brought laptops, passports and other valuables with us…

We
had tried to check out Andrew’s wood shop on a previous day but were foiled by
a lack of keys. On this day we were more
successful and being a carpenter, Stefan was particularly interested in
checking things out.

Andrew
had some business he needed to take care of at the logging camp that supplies
the wood for the shop and I decided to join him. Here we see the local women rushing to sell
vegetables to passers-by on the road.

There
were three of us on the trip, Andrew, his friend and business partner Chakwanda (spelling?) and myself. It was rather crowded in the
small cab of the pickup, especially as it is a manual transmission, but we are
all friends so it wasn’t a problem.

It
was only about 7:30 when we arrived at the camp but by then it was pitch black
out. As we arrived, one of the two guys
employed to work and stay at the camp came out in his underwear brandishing a
stick in case we were thieves but quickly realized it was his bosses,
haha.

The
worker/guard in question, eating some nshima and greens for dinner. I forget this guy’s name, but he was
hilarious. He moved like a cartoon
character and was always sitting or standing at some weird angle, arms or legs
twisted in strange angles. He was a real
bush-cat.

Some
of the material ready to be brought into town.
Unfortunately phones don’t work out here, and this had recently led to a
major problem. A truck showed up saying
they were supposed to pick up a large load of lumber. Unable to check with Andrew or Chakwanda, the
workers let them take it, and it turned they were simply thieves taking
advantage of the lack of communication… They talked business for a while, we
ate last night’s stew for breakfast, brought the water drums to the well in
order to fill them and set off towards home.

Swimming
with local kids in one of the rivers we crossed along the way.

The
start of rainy season is the start of mushroom season, and you see kids all
over the road with handfuls of mushrooms for sale. Some are the size as this photo, but they can
be as large as a foot or two across! We
bought the handful and returned home to cook up a feast.

Apparently
Choma is a big enough town to get Zambian pop stars coming through on tour, and
tonight’s entertainment would be Mampi. Naturally
I had no idea who this was, but apparently she was on African Idols or
something. We showed up to the club
around 11pm and there was a huge crowd pushing to get in the front door. We eventually got inside, but in the process
someone tried to pick-pocket me. Luckily
I felt it and shouted something while knocking the hand away, but I couldn’t
tell who it was.

The
show itself was terrible. All it
consisted of was extremely lazy lip-synching for about twenty minutes at a
time, then twenty minutes breaks while she changed clothes and not even any
discernible choreography from her or her backup dancers. There were other ‘artists’ as well who
‘preformed’ but it was no better, as far as I could tell it was just drunk
local guys climbing on stage to shout over a track playing over the sound
system. Oh well, it was kind of funny.

It
was time for Stefan and I to say goodbye to the girls, to leave Choma and to
move on. We’d had a great time there and
spent much longer than either of us ever expected to, but at that point there
was no reason to stay. After saying our
goodbyes we packed up the bus and started driving. We both felt good to be on the road
again. Tex and Matt, two Peace Corps
guys we’d made friends with were going to Lake Kariba so we decided to join
them.

We
drove down the main road for a while, but the last 40km or so down to the lakes
edge was all dirt. Along the way we
passed by an area where people were making bricks. The way this is done is by digging the clay
out of the ground, forming it into bricks and then stacking it in these piles
where fires are then set inside. I
thought they looked pretty cool and they reminded me of the Egyptian pyramids
and of how far I had to go still, haha.

We
showed up at Lakeview Lodge around 3pm and I was impressed how nice it
was. Everything was clean and well
built, and the setting on the lake shore was beautiful. The sign did not stop me from swimming.

Most
people who stay at the lodge opt for the fancy chalets, but us and our poor
Peace Corps friends are on the budget option and pitched tents in their camping
area. Unfortunately there was no power
and the water didn’t even work, but we made due.

As
the sun begins to go down the lake fills with fishing boats and it reminded me
of Lake Malawi, with one major exception.
While on Lake Malawi the locals are still fishing from dugout canoes and
attracting fish with kerosene lanterns, on Kariba they use motorboats with
large florescent lights and nets on booms.
The lights on the water were rather pretty, but the low rumble of
countless diesel engines was a little annoying.

Stefan
fishing the next morning.

Lounging
poolside with the Peace Corps posse.

And
a beautiful sunset over the lake that evening.

The
PCVs (that would be Peace Corps Volunteers for those of you who haven’t spent
week upon week listening to Peace Corps people talking in acronyms) left very
early in the morning as they had to return to work from their little break, but
we took it easy in the morning before setting out.

It
was a bit of a drive, but about 6 hours later we arrived in the capital city of
Lusaka. It felt weird being in a “big”
city again and the traffic and modern buildings were a bit of a shock to the
system, but we had a reason for being here.

That
reason was Heather, a college friend of my sister Holly. My sister had linked to my blog post about
riding across Botswana on her facebook page and when Heather saw I was near by
she offered to host if I was in the area.
Naturally I accepted. Heather is
a teacher at the American International School of Lusaka and after winding
through the busy streets of Lusaka we found our way to her house. Upon our arrival, one of the first things
Heather did was break out some proper American micro brews! The commissary for embassy employees has tons
of American food and drinks, including American beer and having some real beer
with strong flavors (including a Full Sale Pale Ale from Oregon) was a real
treat after 11 months of bland, mass produced African beers.

Heather
gave us no time to rest however, as Mondays is rugby night. Now neither Stefan or I had ever played rugby
before, but it was just a co-ed rec game and a time to have a little fun on the
field. I did my best, but to be honest I
mostly felt like a chicken with its head cut off, running around in all the
wrong places at all the wrong times. I
guess it would help if I actually understood the game or knew the rules….

When
you stay in small towns or villages, coming to the big city tends to mean time
to shop. Not that I enjoy shopping as a
recreation, I have a strong dislike of it actually and especially of shopping
malls. Unfortunately, in Africa malls
are the only place to do any real shopping for decent products, so we ended up
visiting them with shocking frequency while in Lusaka. It still wasn’t even Thanksgiving, but the
malls were going into full Christmas mode.
Oh well, might as well make the best of it.

That
night was volleyball night. I’m no
superstar at that either, but at least I understand the game and enjoy it. Our shopping trip went late and we only
caught the tail end of the game, but I thought I had a few decent plays, and in
my enthusiasm dove and rubbed a fair amount of skin off my knees. After volleyball we met up with some
co-workers for drinks and had a nice chat in the back yard.

The
next morning it was time for Stefan and I to put on a show. Heather had asked us to give a presentation
about our travels to her class, so we spent a while organizing photos and gave
it a shot, talking about why we travel, what we are learning and some stories
from life on the road. Stefan only had
photos from Namibia with him, so he showed those and then it was my turn. Being that we are in Africa, I decided to
show them photos from my 6-month Asia trip.
I did my best to be interesting, but it was a morning class before a
holiday and these are high school kids, so their minds were probably
elsewhere. Oh well. That said, one of her better students said
something along the lines of “Maybe I won’t go on to college yet, now I want to
travel.” Maybe I succeeded in getting
one, haha.

That
afternoon we had to run all over town with a big list of errands, the most
important being purchasing a new tire for the bus. We wound up in the ‘auto parts district’ of
Lusaka, and while Stefan was in the store buying a tire, I had to answer
questions to about 20 curious locals who were all quite fascinated by the bus,
especially when I told them how far Stefan had driven it. That night we went out to Indian food, then
got suckered into going to the movie theater, to see the new Twilight movie….
Yah I know, at least it was less than $3!

Ah
Thanksgiving, I’d just about forgotten about you! If I weren’t staying with Heather, I probably
would have as I’ve pretty much lost all sense of time over the past two years
of travel. We were headed out to play
football with a bunch of other Americans, but dealing with the important things
first, we finished the pies before heading out.

Football. Another game I don’t really understand,
despite the fact I am American.

Getting
ready for a proper Thanksgiving feast.

The
living room was moved outside for the festivities.

In
total there were somewhere between 40 and 50 people at dinner, and what must
have been a million pounds of food. I
stuffed myself with delicious food and when I couldn’t eat any more, went back
for a second and third plate. This is
Thanksgiving after all, that’s just how it’s done! The whole night was a real blast, I’m very
grateful to have been able to share it with so many people despite being so far
from home.

That
weekend was the ‘Bongwe Bush Bash’, a three day party at the Gwabi River Lodge
on the lower Zambezi. I had no idea what
it was going to be like, but I didn’t want to sit around the house in Lusaka
all weekend doing nothing, so I joined Heather and six of her girlfriends to
see what it was all about.

The
Lodge was pretty nice, situated above the river and had a nice pool and deck
area, but there wasn’t anything particularly unique about it. The group had rented a chalet, but an
unfinished and unfurnished one, so all the girls put sleeping pads on the floor
sleep-over style and I set my tent up on the porch outside.

The
party that night was ok, but obviously quite a lot smaller than the organizers
had hopped and planned for. I wasn’t a
fan of the music the DJ was playing but still had an enjoyable night.

Playing
in the pool the next morning. I actually
met another set of triplets, which was amusing as that doesn’t happen very
often.

After
a lazy morning, we all piled onto a boat for a river tour on the Zambezi with
hopes of seeing some nice wildlife.

We
managed to see a few large groups of hippos and two crocs, but to be honest the
whole boat trip was a huge disappointment.
You win some, you lose some I guess.

That
night I wasn’t really in the mood to party, so after food and a few drinks, I
headed to my tent to finish my book and take a nap. I’d intended on returning to the festivities
after a little rest, but simply didn’t wake up until morning. Oh well, I suppose I just wasn’t in the mood
that night.

Everyone
packed up their things and we set off for Lusaka. The drive was scenic (well, the first half)
and uneventful. When we returned home, thanks
to Heathers commissary hook-up, I got another special treat, Annie’s organic
Mac & Cheese! It might seem silly to
some of you back home, but when you are gone this long, having a little taste
of home can really brighten your day.

Ugh,
more shopping malls…. The last few days in Lusaka were also pretty
uneventful. We took care of some last
minute shopping (I got myself a little Shox powered mini-speaker, my Christmas
present to myself), saw the movie Argo which was actually quite good, had
dinner with some friends, and so on. Not
much to say about it really.

Haha,
a friend was coming over to Heathers for a board game night and drove into a
ditch. I still think he probably could
have gotten out on his own if he’d tried a little harder, but I just had to
include this photo of the VW pulling out a Land Cruiser!

On
Saturday it was time for us to say goodbye to Heather, our wonderful host for
the past ten days and hit the road again.
Thanks again for everything Heather, we had a great time and it was
awesome to have a big American Thanksgiving way out here in Zambia!

Shortly
after leaving Lusaka we found ourselves back in rural Africa again. Unlike America where you have wide swaths of
suburbs on the edges of cities, transitions seem to happen pretty fast out
here. One minute you are in the city,
then the sort of shanty town edges, then into farmland. A great deal of the road from Lusaka to
Kapiri Mposhi is lined with large scale commercial farms and both Stefan and I
looked at this fact from the perspective that there were just about no good
spots to duck into the bush and camp.

As
we passed this, I just about did a double take.
It looks just like a generic American suburb! According to the sign, they are going to be
some sort of government housing, for the air force I think it was.

Roadside
charcoal sales. These bags sell for
about $2-$3 I believe and is the fuel rural Zambians use for cooking. Unfortunately it is also a significant cause
of deforestation in Africa, but I’m not sure the people really have any
realistic alternative at the moment.

As
I mentioned, this stretch of Zambia is made up primarily by large farms and it
seemed every space in between was a small village. Once again, no good places to sneak into the
bush and camp. I’d arranged to stay with
a Peace Corps volunteer the following night, but first we had to find somewhere
to spend this night. After driving all
the way to and then past the volunteers site we would be the next day, we
finally found a small dirt road off the main track and found a spot to camp for
the night. It wasn’t far from the main
road and we could see and hear every car at night, but it did the job. I awoke to someone walking up and saying
hello the next morning, it turned out we were on the edge of someone’s farm and
he was a manager, but I gave him two pieces of bread and he went on his way
without being bothered by our presence.

We
killed time where we had spent the night until the afternoon when Emily (right),
our Peace Corps host was available at her site that is between Kapiro Moshi and
Mkushi. After spending time with
Botswana PCVs and seeing how good they have it, I have to admit I was a bit
shocked to see how the Zambia PCVs live.
Most life as part of a family compound, everyone lives in mud brick huts
with grass roofs (that frequently leak), has no running water and no
electricity. I guess they say Zambia is
the last Peace Corps program where the volunteers live like this, and I
actually think it’s very cool. I think
most of the volunteers are quite proud of this fact as well, and I’ve had quite
a few people point out to me that Zambia Peace Corps has the highest rate of
volunteers extending their service (an extra year) of all the countries Peace
Corps operates. A little while later,
Patricia, another volunteer joined us to spend the night at Emily’s site.

In
the evening Patricia and Emily cooked up a great dinner over the charcoal cooker called a braizer, using mushrooms and
other veggies to put over pasta, and we had a great night talking, drinking
wine and watching Futurama on Stefan’s laptop. A rare treat volunteers since
they don’t have electricity where they live.
Thanks for the hospitality Emily, it was great to meet you and Patricia
and cool to finally see what Peace Corps is like in Zambia.

Patricia
was headed the same way as us (up the Great North Road as it’s called) so she
joined us in the bus as we set off. The
next stop was at another volunteer’s house, Sam. Sam’s site is located a few km off the main
road as part of a small family compound, and is focused in agriculture and
forestry.

At
this point, it was finally time for Stefan and I to split. We are both headed out of Zambia in the north
towards Tanzania, but have different time frames and next steps. He’s meeting his brother in Arusha, I’m heading
to the lake to buy a boat and I have been itching to get on my bike again. After two great months together and many
adventures to reflect on, we looked at the calendar, figured out when will be
the best time for me to swing by his place in Germany between Egypt and the
United States at the very end of my trip and said our goodbyes. Travel is a great way to meet new people and
make new friends. I never thought I’d
spend two months with a German guy in a 74 VW between Botswana and Zambia, but
that’s just the kind of things that happen out here and the way you end up
making friends. I look back to how I traveled with Chris in the Philippines and how that is what ended up bringing me
to Africa in the first place. With that in mind, there is no telling what
making friends with Stefan might end up leading to in the future!

That’s
about it for now. As I said in the
beginning of this post I’m now a little over a week into my bike ride through
Zambia and things are going well. It was
never part of the plan to stay with PCVs the whole time, but that’s pretty much
what has happened so far and I’m having a great time. It’s fun to be in such rural villages and a
great way to see the country. My next
post will be of the whole bike trip and efforts at getting a boat, so check
back in two or three weeks, it ought to be a good one!